Pits and Peaks This Week

Published July 7, 2017

Bet you thought I forgot about this series! Nope, life has just been completely crazy. But I’m back now with the latest installment of Pits and Peaks, where I chronicle our weekly wins and losses on the frugal front as we save up for an epic van trip in our camper van, Cecilia.

Sleepy boy during our New York visit.

It was a rough week. I’m not going to even touch previous weeks that haven’t been detailed here, but just the past week was a rough week on the financial front. We had a trip to New York to visit our new nephew, and then several days of sleep-deprived work and sleepy evenings. Some anxiety and facial twitches even made their appearance this week, so that’s always fun. Without further ado:

Pits

On the tail end of our trip to New York, we ended up spending more than we would have liked on airport food. I know, I know, cardinal sin. For reasons I won’t get into, we didn’t have the opportunity to pack any kind of lunch or snacks when we had to leave to catch our flight back to LA. We flew out of Newark (to save cash) and it was truly dystopic: iPads at every table in the airport, and you had to order food from the iPads…?? It was awful. And expensive.

We also succumbed to the siren song of takeout this week. A combination of sleep deprivation and anxiety and an empty fridge led us to Indian food and I honestly have few regrets. I even rented a movie, because we’re high rollers like that?

Peaks

We were able to stay with Anna’s family for most of our trip out east, so we didn’t have to pay for food or accommodations for most of it which was great. We returned the favor by helping out with the baby (when mamma would let us!) and doing some cooking.

The finished sweat suit! Should fit in a few months, when the weather is appropriate.

I had the pleasure of giving Anna’s sister some knitted gifts for the baby, including a sweat set that I made with the yarn I got on a big discount because I did some sample knitting for the yarn dyer. Win-win-win! She loved the gifts, and we can’t wait to see how cute little Carter looks in them (when he’s a bit bigger).

We also bartered with my mother to take care of our kitties while we were gone, as we take care of my parents’ dog (and the house) when they leave town. It’s a good trade-off, and we were able to travel worry-free.

Next week, we’re looking forward to settling back into the grind. We’ve got a fridge full of tomatoes from our garden (this is not an exaggeration) that we’re hoping to cook up into a gigantic batch of pasta sauce, some to eat immediately and a lot to freeze for future use.